Vagrants - Semi-Frontal (Self-Released)

[6/10] With cover artwork featuring someone vomiting into a toilet and a name like Vagrants, you’re right not to expect anything nice from this Irish mob. Featuring members of Only Fumes and Corpses, Trenches, Rites and Them Martyrs, this mongrel delivers a short, sharp shock of nine songs in less than 15 minutes. Think of a sucker punch in the back of the head while drunkenly staggering home through an alley in a bad neighbourhood. There you go.

From the lurching opener “Rented Cell” to the dirty buzzing guitars and yelped vocals of “Bleeding City,” through to the caveman stomp of the title track, there’s nothing glamorous here. Fast, grimy, scuzzy stuff it’s all over before it’s really begun, in a blast of jabbing guitars and aggressive snare snaps. By keeping it to the point, Vagrants manage to never let the listener get bored.

Even though they’re not reinventing anything, each track has a distinct character that stops the whole from becoming one blurred, muddy mess. Whether that’s the mid-paced swagger of “Rented Cell,” the pulled back chugging guitar lines of “The Box Life,” the early Napalm Death vocal fury freak-outs during “Recovery” and “Felch Lives” or the plain out-and-out rampage of “Purple Brain,” there’s plenty of interest happening.

Vagrants are the perfect outlet for some dive-bar, punk that’s going to shout in your face, rather than stand on the stage and wait for you applause.